Hong Kong is mental! It's busy, it's crowded, it's nice and warm and it's steep (in terms of both landscape and money!). It's a city of contrasts. Streets that could have been in any part of China we've been to already - street vendors, wooden buildings, tin roof's - literally underneath some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, full of millionaire businessmen who come trotting out in their designer suits to scoff their lunches in some of the priciest restaurants. We've studied the property pages - those homeowners are RICH! In a coffee shop Gemma found a magazine with an article in about how to buy your own island, which she studied intently until she got to the bit about your average island costing upwards of about US$50 million . . . Graham had better find a VERY good job when he gets back!

The highlights of our time here have been riding the Star Ferry between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, horse racing and going up to The Peak (more about them later!). We've had a bit of a stressful time with those pesky visa's again (damn things!), but have been successful in getting both Chinese and Vietnamese visa's in the space of 4 days, which we were rather relieved about! We've been surprised at how difficult everything has been here and think we've probably been lulled into a false sense of security by those gorgeous, efficient Japanese! We thought it would be just as easy here - what with everyone speaking English and everything! - but it most definitely is not! Even getting money from the ATM has proved a mammoth expedition - with 3 refusing 4 cards each before one coughed up with an enormous sigh of relief! It would have been a bit of problem what with our passports being at the embassy and so being unable to change any travellers cheques . . . this place sucks the money out of you like a leech! As Graham says, on the grand world scale economy of beer prices this is by far the most expensive place so far!

In a bid to try and win back some of the slippery cash that we've been spending we went horse racing. It was great! It meant Gemma had to buy some new shoes (No - she really did! Flip flops and trainers not allowed!), they were great too. They were sparkly! We decided to do it in style and found ourselves in a members stand, with free food and wine! Mmmmm mmm! After consuming between us a vast quantity of both, Graham studied the form and won $18. Gemma picked the ones with the best names (how could you not bet on the Big Kahuna?!) and won $105 (Jayne and John - we backed a horse called Limoncello in your honour. It didn't win!)! Sadly these are Hong Kong rather than US dollars, which means a sum total of around £9, which didn't even cover the sparkly shoes!

It's been a bit smoggy while we've been here so we were saving our trip up to the Peak on the tram for when it got a bit clearer. Sadly, it didn't, so last night we went up for a night view instead. The tram line is so steep that in some places you're practically lying down. All the lights were beautiful (though obviously not in the traditional view sense) and we splashed out with our last Hong Kong Dollars on a slap up dinner up there. After a nice meal and a few drinks overlooking the bay we discovered that there was some kind of traffic problem and there were no taxi's coming up or down, which meant the queue for the tram was mentally long. No problem we said, we'll walk. Actually, we ran (it was so steep you couldn't do anything else!) (you know how when you're drunk you can run really, really fast? Well we were like Linford Christie and Paula Radcliffe!) and made it back to Central Pier in 45 minutes . . . only to get back to our guesthouse (in Mirador Mansions, though in Hong Kong terms we've discovered that 'mansions' means something more like tenement than Woburn Abbey!) to find that the lifts stop running at 10pm and we had to climb 13 flights of stairs. Not terribly impressed (and yes, today our legs do hurt!).

Later today we're heading back into China proper, on our first overnight train for a while, to Guilin. We're really excited to be moving on. In our opinion, Hong Kong is great, but far preferable at night, and from a distance!